High-resolution, still panoramic images are typically captured using a digital camera on a rotating platform, tripod, turntable, and spindle. The camera is rotated once, and images taken while the camera is rotated are combined to fill a panoramic mosaic. When automated, this process can be completed in a few minutes.
A still imaging camera mounted on top of a robot has been used to take panoramic images. The robot is designed to travel around a city taking panoramic images of various local scenes.
However, all of these devices are designed for still imaging cameras, and these cameras do not perform continuous video capture, store the video data on the device, and process it in real-time. Furthermore, although panoramic images may be generated, only the entire panoramic image is output.
Moving panoramic video images are usually captured using a non-moving panoramic video camera optically coupled to curved mirrors or fish-eye lenses that capture the entire 360-degree view at once. For example, a fish-eye lens camera uses a spherical mirror to capture a hemisphere and then morphs the captured hemisphere into video. The resulting video undergoes extensive image processing to create low-resolution videos of the panoramic scene. With such a system, the frame rate is maintained across the entire scene at the expense of the resolution of the resulting video frames.
One solution for both 360-degree video imaging and selective view generation is to use a panoramic lens affixed to a video camera. An example of such a solution is the Netvision360 product from Remote Reality.
In another prior art solution, a large set of cameras is used (e.g., 20 cameras) for stereo video. Each of the cameras produces a video stream. For example, Ladybug uses 5 cameras to capture 360 degrees. In one example, 60 cameras are used to capture a 3D image.
In an other example, video is captured by pointing multiple cameras at a mirror. By processing all of the video streams, portions of the various video streams may be combined to create a full three-dimensional image of a scene. In another prior art solution, video is captured using cameras that point to a set of mirrors. The result is a 360 degree field of view. Thus, it is possible to obtain a high resolution video stream, but only with multiple cameras.